Ed Miliband will risk accusations of scaremongering today when he claims that David Cameron wants to take Britain back to a time when “children left school at 14”.
In a speech revealing Labour’s five-point pledge card for the election, Mr Miliband will again warn voters that the prime minister’s plans would threaten the NHS and return the country’s spending to 1930s levels. He will also claim that they would return Britain to an age when some children were forced to leave school early.
“The Tories will carry on putting in place their vision of how our country succeeds by stripping public services to the very bone so they hit their target of spending back to levels not seen since the 1930s, before there was a NHS and children left school at 14,” he will say.
“Be in no doubt what that means: education cut, the NHS undermined, social care devastated, crumbling infrastructure, lower living standards.”
Tories have suggested that Mr Miliband’s five pledges are different from the five priorities set out by Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor.
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Mr Milibandpromises a strong economic foundation, higher living standards for working families, an NHS with time to care, controls on immigration, and a country where “the next generation can do better than the last”. In an article yesterday, Mr Balls prioritised making work pay, backing Britain’s businesses, supporting long-term investment, investing in the next generation and balancing the books to save NHS.
An aide to Mr Balls ridiculed the idea of a split with the Labour leader, saying that the shadow chancellor had been writing specifically about economics before the budget. “Had he been writing about Labour’s five main pledges, he would have talked about Labour’s five main pledges,” he said.